A Big Unwelcome for Controversial Berkeley Student

Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Saturday, August 22, 1998

Yolanda Manuel's anger over her 7-year-old daughter's slaying in a Nevada casino last summer is directed these days not at the man accused murdering her, but rather at a University of California at Berkeley student who she says did nothing to stop the crime.

And because authorities said David Thomas Cash Jr. kept quiet for several days after his high school friend, Jeremy Strohmeyer, confessed to strangling and killing little Sherrice Iverson, Manuel believes Cash should be criminally charged, and barred from attending the prestigious university.

"His career needs to be taken away from him because he was an accessory to my child's murder," Manuel, 28, said from her Los Angeles home.

Strohmeyer, 20, goes to trial August 31 in Las Vegas on charges of murder, kidnapping and sexual assault in Sherrice's slaying May 25, 1997 in a rest room at the Primadonna casino near Las Vegas. But Cash, who until recently lived in Long Beach, has not been charged and plans to begin his sophomore year at UC Berkeley next week.

Cash, 19, will find himself the target of a campus protest Wednesday by 50 Southern Californians who plan to charter a bus to Berkeley in hopes of getting Cash kicked out of the university.

The group is particularly incensed by Cash's comments in interviews, from his lack of remorse over Sherrice's death to assertions that the notoriety of the case has helped him meet women.

"He's going to this school looking for girlfriends because of what he did," Manuel said. "He thinks he's famous. He thinks he's the big guy on campus now, and he wants to draw all this attention. The attention he's going to get is going to be all negative."

Cash did not respond to a written request for comment. Calls to his attorney were not returned.

In July 1997, Cash told a grand jury that he saw Strohmeyer, his Long Beach high school friend, struggling with Sherrice. But Cash said he left before Strohmeyer began molesting her, transcripts show.

When Strohmeyer confessed to his friend to strangling and killing the second-grader, authorities say, Cash kept quiet until Strohmeyer turned himself in three days later.

Last month, he told the Los Angeles Times, "I'm not going to get upset over somebody else's life. I just worry about myself first. I'm not going to lose sleep over somebody else's problems."

The newspaper also said Cash claimed the case, if anything, made it easier for him to score with women.

Cash later told Los Angeles KLSX-FM radio talk show hosts Tim Conway Jr. and Doug Steckler: "The simple fact remains I don't know this little girl. . . . I don't know people in Panama or Africa who are killed every day so I can't feel remorse for them. The only person I know is Jeremy Strohmeyer."

Conway and Steckler said Cash's arrogant statements, which generated hundreds of angry letters and phone calls to the station, prodded them to charter the bus to Berkeley.

"David Cash should not be treated to one of the best educations in the world," said Conway, son of actor Tim Conway.

Steckler said, "We charge (UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert) Berdahl and the UC Board of Regents with cowardice in their failure to expel David Cash."

Las Vegas authorities said there is no law in Nevada, or in California, that mandates the reporting of a crime and that is why Cash wouldn't be charged.

"It's a moral question," said Las Vegas Metropolitan police Sergeant Kevin Manning. "At this point he's being treated as a witness."

J. Charles Thompson, Clark County assistant district attorney, said, "We are unaware of any information that would support a charge."

Cash is expected to testify against Strohmeyer, who could face the death penalty if convicted, authorities said.

At UC Berkeley, where Cash is studying nuclear engineering, spokesman Jesus Mena said there is not much the administration can do. Cash, a graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School, was accepted to the university two months before the slaying, based on his academic record.

"The incident itself is really horrifying, and it's extremely distressing to have the university in any way connected," Mena said. But the university has to let the legal process take its course, he said.

In Long Beach, school district officials took immediate action against Cash after the slaying, barring him from attending his graduation and senior prom at Wilson High. Cash rode past the dance in a limousine.

"It would have been inappropriate and disruptive for him to return to campus," said Long Beach school district spokesman Richard Van Der Lann.

Najee Ali, director of Project Islamic HOPE in Los Angeles, is collecting signatures for petitions urging prosecutors to charge Cash and asking Nevada legislators to pass a "Good Samaritan" law in Sherrice's name. The law would require anyone witnessing an attack on children to call police.

Ali also said UC Berkeley officials shouldn't have to think twice about expelling him.

"The university administrators need to take a look in the mirror and really question their hearts," Ali said. "The student body and faculty should know that on their campus is someone who has the blood of a little girl on his hands."